Archive | April 30, 2010 | Armed with Science

Navy Researcher talks Microbial Fuel Cells on NPR’s “Science Friday”

Filed under Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Podcast by John Ohab on April 30, 2010 at 8:30 am {no comments}

Microbial Fuel Cell Research at the Office of Naval Research

ONR's Dr. Chrisey discusses microbial fuel cell research on Science Friday, April 30, 2010, at 3pm eastern.

Scientists at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have developed a microbial fuel cell that converts decomposed marine organisms into electricity.

Harnessing the power of the Geobacter microbe, the device offers a clean, efficient, lightweight and reliable alternative to batteries and other environmentally harmful fuels.

This amazing work will be featured on today’s edition of National Public Radio (NPR)’s Science Friday, a weekly, nationwide science talk show that focuses on the biggest news in science.

Listen live online today at 3pm eastern, when Dr. Linda Chrisey, ONR program officer, joins host Ira Flatow and a number of biofuels experts for Science Friday’s “Biofuel Roundup”. If you won’t be at your computer, you can tune in to public radio stations across the nation. See if your favorite radio station broadcasts Science Friday.

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ONR Distinguished Lecture: General James N. Mattis

Filed under Videos by John Ohab on April 29, 2010 at 1:19 am {4 comments}

General James N. Mattis, Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command, visited the Office of Naval Research (ONR) on Thursday, April 29, 2010, as the next ONR Distinguished Lecturer. The title of his presentation was, “Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command Perspectives”.

If you missed the live broadcast, please check back in the next few days to see the archived lecture. Thanks!

Defense Media CTO: Wither Biometrics?

Filed under Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Technology by John Ohab on April 27, 2010 at 10:33 am {no comments}

Craig Kaucher is the Chief Technology and Information Officer at Defense Media Activity.

Craig Kaucher is the Chief Technology and Information Officer at the Defense Media Activity. These are his personal views and do not in any way constitute an endorsement on behalf of the Defense Media Activity, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government of any particular commercial product or service.

Over the past decade, approaches to securing enterprise information systems have evolved from the secure bastion, through defense in depth, to include today the concepts of continuous monitoring and operations. Through this all, many newer, more powerful technologies have emerged and been integrated into various portions of the enterprise information assurance architecture. One particular aspect of information assurance, the password, which is often seen as one of the greatest vulnerabilities of information systems, still seems to be sticking around in some form or another.

Fortunately at the Department of Defense, the Common Access Card (CAC) has alleviated much of the pain of remembering multiple passwords. Unfortunately, the still-required password, as a backup to the CAC, if nothing else, is longer than ever. Combine that with the near infinite number of passwords that almost anyone uses to access anything from on-line banking to e-commerce sites to subscriptions, and the potential for mistakes or intentional bypassing (i.e., writing them down) becomes quite high.

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Papa, Bravo, Romeo: The PBR Story

Filed under Education & Culture, Technology by Armed with Science on April 25, 2010 at 7:29 am {2 comments}

A Mark-II PBR at full speed in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

Dr. John Darrell Sherwood is a historian with the Naval History & Heritage Command and the author of four books on the Vietnam War.

The iconic river craft of the Vietnam War was unquestionably the PBR—a boat made famous by the film Apocalypse Now (1979). The Navy employed the PBR (Patrol Boat River) to patrol the rivers and canals of South Vietnam and to search river traffic for insurgents, arms, and ammunition.

The PBR’s life began at Hatteras Yacht Company in North Carolina in 1965. Responding to a request for a small patrol boat, Hatteras proposed a 28-foot fiberglass hull powered by water-jet pumps. As opposed to propellers, water pumps would allow the new boat to operate in extremely shallow water. Enthusiastic about the proposal, the Bureau of Ships asked for a prototype that could not only achieve speeds of 25 to 30 knots and draw just nine inches of water, but also accommodate a crew of four along with extensive equipment and weaponry, including a twin .50-caliber machine gun in an armored turret forward and a .30-caliber gun (later replaced by a .50-caliber) aft.

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Navy Training Range Doubles as a Laboratory for Marine Mammal Studies

Filed under Earth Sciences, Life Sciences by Armed with Science on April 23, 2010 at 11:41 am {one comment}

Dave Moretti inspects a sonobuoy in a laboratory at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I. (Photo: Naval Undersea Warfare Center)

Bob Freeman works in the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy.

In March 2000, 17 cetaceans stranded and seven of the animals died on an island in the Bahamas following a nearby naval exercise that employed active sonar. Since then, the Navy has been sponsoring research to better understand the nature of marine mammal behavioral response to anthropogenic (human-made) sound in the ocean.

Some of that research is taking place at Navy acoustic ranges like the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, or AUTEC, in the Bahamas.

“The goal of our program is to study animals in their natural environment through the application of passive acoustics, which means we listen for the vocalizations that are made by animals and then try to use detections of vocalization as a proxy for the behavior,” said Mr. Dave Moretti, the principal investigator for marine mammal monitoring on Navy ranges, in an April 21 interview on Pentagon Web Radio’s audio webcast “Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military.”

Listen to the full interview or read the transcript.

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Historic Footage of Space Plane Test Flight [VIDEO]

Filed under Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences by John Ohab on April 22, 2010 at 12:22 pm {2 comments}

This historical footage documents test flights of the U.S. Air Force’s X-37 Approach and Landing Test Vehicle, the predecessor of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV).

The launch of the X-37B OTV mission is set for today, April 22, 2010, from Space Launch Complex-41 launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., with the launch broadcast beginning at 7:32 p.m. EDT. The launch can be viewed via webcast at http://www.ulalaunch.com.

The X-37B OTV will provide a flexible space test platform to conduct various experiments and allow satellite sensors, subsystems, components and associated technology to be efficiently transported to and from the space environment where it will need to function.

For more information about the X-37B OTV, check out the recent Bloggers Roundtable interview with Mr. Gary Payton, Air Force Deputy Under Secretary for Space Programs, and Lt. Col. Erik Bowman, 45th Launch Support Squadron commander, Patrick AFB, Fla.

Wednesday Webcast: Studying the Effect of Sonar on Marine Mammals

Filed under Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Podcast by Armed with Science on April 21, 2010 at 9:09 am {one comment}

Dave Moretti is principal investigator for the Marine Mammal Monitoring on Navy Ranges program. (Courtesy photo)

Listen live on Wed, April 21, 2010, at 2pm eastern, when we explore ogoing Navy-funded studies into the effects of sonar on marine mammals.

Joining the webcast is Dave Moretti of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, RI, the principal investigator for the Marine Mammal Monitoring on Navy Ranges program sponsored by the Chief of Naval Operations Environmental Readiness Division.

He will discuss research gathered from Navy ranges where populations of sonar-sensitive whales have been identified. Researchers are analyzing data from prototype passive acoustic tools designed to monitor these animals before, during, and after active sonar operations, then combining it with visual and tag data to better understand animals’ reactions to sonar.

Defense Fellow Breaking the Sound Barrier for Veterans

Filed under Life Sciences, Physical Sciences by Armed with Science on April 20, 2010 at 9:38 am {no comments}

Dr. Shinn-Cunningham uses test subjects like this mannequin to study how the brain reacts to different sound settings. (Courtesy photo)

Dr. Barbara Shinn-Cunningham is a Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and a National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow.

As an engineer who also happens to be a musician, studying how we hear was a natural choice for me when I entered graduate school. What I didn’t realize back then was that work I do would have implications for hundreds of thousands of returning American war veterans who have service-related hearing injuries, not to mention the tens of millions of civilian Americans who have hearing loss.

In many social settings, like a cocktail party, multiple sounds reach the ears from all different directions. Normal-hearing, young, healthy listeners are good at focusing on whatever source they are interested in (like the attractive lawyer they just met) and ignoring other sounds (the snob opining about the hint of grapefruit is his chardonnay, the couple bickering about their finances, …). In other words, most listeners are able to filter out unwanted sound sources and focus on what sound is important, a process known as “selective auditory attention”.

Understanding when and how selective auditory attention fails is a problem that has real consequences in every walk of life. Imagine not being able to converse with your spouse at the dinner table because of the rambunctious antics of your three young children, or not being able to understand a command directed at you during a critical moment on a battlefield. Failing to filter out unwanted sounds can lead to catastrophic outcomes, from social isolation to life-threatening decision errors.

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